Highly Secure Lsb-based Image Steganography with Four-factor Security

In view of rapidly evolving technology, there comes a fair share of vulnerabilities, and a greater need for protection of confidential data. Although encryption techniques are popular to make sensitive data indecipherable, the same can be extracted if the appropriate key is obtained. Steganography, however, aims to keep the very existence of the message hidden from prying eyes. It is the art of secretly writing sensitive text inside an image or an audio file in such a way, that anyone viewing the image would not see any difference between the original and modified image. However, neither technique is perfect or secures enough on sensitive data. The four factors in focus are the Rail Fence Cipher, RSA Encryption, Aztec Code, and LSB Steganography. The data will be passed one by one through all the processes, and the output from one will be passed into the next, thus providing the user with four-fold security. Once the final encrypted data in the form of an Aztec code is hidden inside the cover image, it will be visually indistinguishable from the original image, since only the least bits of the image has been altered to hide the image. This method is more secure than conventional methodologies since even if one factor is compromised, the sensitive data remains encrypted and undecipherable to all malicious intent.